may 1 2013

i'm working on a poem at the moment. i think it's pretty good. i hope it'll win me some unknown prize or something, but that's unlikely. really unlikely, i guess.

i've been reading some poetry lately. i've read "mending wall," "the oven bird," "the gift outright," "nothing gold can stay," etc, etc. by robert frost. i have a book of his most well-known poetry. a few years ago i hated his poems. now i like them. maybe it was the way i read them.

i eat a lot. i have to eat at least every three hours or i get light-headed. i eat a lot of bananas and apples. why do you care? i don't know. . .

today is the birthday of the girl i thought i loved in high school. i haven't seen or spoken to her in about four years. don't know why, but i still remember her birthday. i wonder if she would remember me. . . ? if i ever see her again, i must apologize for the shitty things i did to her--like ignore her, pretend to be angry at her, blame her for my misery. oh yeah, she was a quasi-friend, mostly acquaintance of mine. that's how she was aware of the things i did.

i used to be a really shitty person. now i'm just a shit person. i'm trying hard to stop being so shitty.

shitty: the word of the day. noun--excrement. see: poo, feces, fecal matter, myself.

i think it would be fun to drunkenly make-out with my friends older sister for a night. it's not going to happen though. probably not. can't rule anything out, you know what i mean?

i'm too sex-crazed for my own good.

god, i'd make a shitty boyfriend. 

april 25, 2013

lately, i've gone to bed without washing my face or brushing my teeth.

i worry when it rains. if it rains hard, water gets into my headlights and the bulbs usually burn out. i must have bought 5 or 6 bulbs in the past 3 years.

one of my friends has a pretty girlfriend. she's normally the only girl who hangs out with us. sometimes i imagine making out with her. sometimes it's more than that. if she ever offered to make out, would i accept? it won't happen; she won't want to make out with anyone other than her boyfriend. it's satisfying and shameful to think about.

i'm always late to class. why is that? i don't ever feel like i want to be there, either.

there are some things in my room that should be thrown away, yet i can't. there are lots of old school papers from 6 years ago,  about six or 7 high school notebooks, expired information and acceptance letters from colleges when i was a senior in high school. some things i think i'll need one day; others make me paranoid because they have my personal information on them. the rest makes me sad.

i regret not working harder the past three years of college. i feel incompetent because i haven't gotten into a better university. when i'm driving around Los Angeles and I see stickers or placards that say UCLA on them, i feel disappointed. and lonely. i really would have liked going to UCLA. Así es la vida, i guess.

'when i become the next literary genius, they'll beg me to even visit their school'--that's what a part of my brain thinks.

i don't think i would make out with my friends girlfriend. even if nobody knew. because if he ever found out, he'd fall apart. he loves her with his life. it's just a stupid fantasy in my head that i would never talk about with my friends, or say out loud--except for here. i think it's because she's so pretty that i have these thoughts. that's really a stupid reason.

april 22, 2013

today i had a couple of classes in the morning. i always get to my first class late, which isn't understandable at all because it's at 9:45, which i think is a perfectly reasonable time for a class to start. but i'm always late nevertheless.

some girl next to me was checking me out in class. how do I know, you ask? she kept looking at me and playing with her hair. i caught her staring at me a few times. then, when we had to talk with the people sitting next to us, she seemed really eager to talk to me when i turned in her direction.

i guess because i've been working out a lot and swimming a lot i have some muscle now. at least that's what i attribute it to. lately, i've felt really comfortable with my body--by which i mean i feel attractive to some woman. but i'm still insecure about my face. my teeth, in particular, which are crooked and stained yellow. i've also noticed my face gets really greasy and oily. some pimples have been popping up on my forehead and nose despite the fact that i'm twenty-two. i'm thinking it has to do with increased testosterone from working out, but i don't know definitively what's causing the acne. general stress is another possibility.

back to this girl in this class. she was checking me out most of class, seemed really eager to talk with me during discussions, and. . . yeah. so what do i do? i ignore her. why? because i'm insecure about myself. i'm really, really, dangerously vain.

the girl wasn't bad looking. she wore round glasses, had straight brown hair, and her face was round. i also noticed she was wearing red lipstick and that her teeth weren't perfectly straight, but they were nice teeth. better than my teeth.

um, she was kind of thick, but she wasn't chubby or fat or anything. she wore tight jeans and a white, fluffy blouse. she was wearing sandals and her toes were painted red. call me gross, but she had nice feet. to be honest, i'm attracted to nice feet; seeing a girl with bare feet and bare legs makes me wild.

what's the point in all this? oh right.

this girl was checking me out, seemed really eager to talk to me, and i ignored her the entire class period. even if i wanted to talk more with her, i didn't feel like i could. in the moment, i felt so ashamed and embarrassed about my physical appearance, and i didn't want her to judge me for it. i thought that i couldn't bear that much pain--the pain of not being good enough for a girl i don't know. i chose to ignore her because my life was easier and less painful that way.

but was it really? who knows what could have come from a few words spoken between us. maybe she would be a really great girlfriend, and i blew my chance of being with her. but even if that were the case, i wasn't too physically attracted to her, which is important to me right now. i'm vain when i know the better choice is not to be.

i'm ashamed by my vanity and how i judge other people. i'm ashamed at my own insecurities when i tell other people that they shouldn't care what other people think. i'm embarrassed by the way i look and how i lack ways to comfortably communicate with people in real life. i don't want to be alone in my life. i don't want to become desperate and stay with someone just because i'm afraid of being alone. i want someone who is like me, who likes me, who is pretty, and who sees past the uncomfortable silences in my conversations and sees a very scared person trying not to drive other people away. in the end, that's all i want.


on an unrelated note:  i saw the film Life is Beautiful today. i recommend it. i particularly liked the first hour when the guy is trying to win over the love of a beautiful woman named Dora, and he repeatedly orchestrates meetings and is always calling her Princess. I just liked the way that he loved her passionately and deeply, and she responds to it.

i'll try to blog more often.

silly little things

1. graduate
2. marry
3. buy a house
4. own a business
5. have children
6. retire
7. end a war
8. write novels
9. fail art
10. live abroad
11. live alone
12. ? ? ?

my twelve(ish) labors.

Sad Post Final Part

 I went to his funeral. It was at 9 am. The church was filled here and there with people. There were people crying during the service. There were readings. There was the eucharist. His body was in a closed casket under a white sheet.

the burial took place right after. the day was hot. i was wearing a black shirt and black pants. we stood directly in the sun as people  shared last thoughts about him. there was a mariachi band playing.

i didn't cry.

his father stood in front of the casket and began to sing. the mariachi band played with him. his face contorted at every note. he lost his voice at times when he couldn't stop the tears from coming. he sang out his broken heart. i thought about the love of my father, and i cried.

overhead, i hear an airplane. i look up and spot a tiny gray shape fly over us. what a racket it makes! i think that maybe that's our life: a passing blip, and a loud splash of noise. the plane passes and is gone.

his mother cries violently. outbursts of grief hit her and i worry she'll never have control of herself ever again. i try placing my own mother in this woman's place, were it my funeral, but i just cannot. the image is too remote for me to imagine. so i just watch her cry.

we watch as they bury him. lots of people are gone now. before they leave, we form a line and threw handfuls of dirt into the grave. it doesn't mean much to me; i do it because everyone else is. i try attaching the feeling of the dirt on my hand with a feeling of mortality. I try making his death tangible by rubbing the leftover dirt between my fingers. But no deeper meanings come to me. I feel nothing.

they bury him. everyone leaves the family to themselves because it feels too personal to stay.

I would have regretted not going.

Rest In Peace.

Sad Post Part 2

My reaction to everything that's happened? Shock. Disbelief. Assertion of denial. This can't be happening. But that's it.

In truth, I'm not heart-broken. Yes, someone has passed away, but not someone I loved. Not someone I cared about. If there is a fault in this, don't tell me.

I'm shocked by this death, but I'm not upset. I feel guilty for not being more moved, but this is the unerring truth: I'm not sad over this person's death. He was a stranger to me, and the only connection I held with him was one of accident, convenience, and impersonal politeness. The event itself is tragic; he was only twenty-one years old and almost out of college. He was a nice person, as far as I knew him, and his death is a horrible loss. There was no reason for this to happen.

This time isn't about me, though. It's about the person who passed, the family left behind, the friends who are grieving. I can wonder and I can formulate any thoughts I want about how the situation affects me, but that doesn't help anyone. And it's not healthy to focus too much on yourself.

In a few days, I'll be going to his funeral. If you don't want to think I am a horrible person, don't read on. I'm attending his funeral to save face. My friends will be there, and if I don't show up, they will never forgive me. They are under the impression that the deceased and I were friends, when in actuality, we were only friendly. Now that he has passed, this relationship has cemented into a reality which I do not think I will be able to escape for many years. To keep the respect of my friends, I will go to the funeral. Only out of politeness.


And if I'm wrong about all this, I hope I am able to someday understand why.

Sad Post

Okay.

So yesterday, thursday, someone I knew was hit by a car while riding his bike and later died at the hospital. He wasn't someone I was close with. He was an acquaintance of mine. I don't know if we were really friends, although we were always friendly to each other. We hung around the same friends. He was friends with my friends, so we were at the same gatherings sometimes. A few years ago he was my secret santa for chistmas and got me a hawaiin shirt.

The weird thing is, right, that i saw him wednesday night. I was one of the last people who saw him alive. so strange. i shook his hand, smiled at him, saw him talking and moving and living. now he's gone? i even joked with him. he was wearing a berkeley shirt but he didn't go there. i said to him as he was leaving, 'hey, bro. i didn't know you went to berkeley.' he smiled and said as he was turning to leave, 'nah, it's a souvenir.' then he left and the next afternoon he was dead.

yesterday, thursday, after it happened, we gathered at my friends house and sat around a bonfire. no one spoke for about an hour and a half. like i said, i wasn't close to him, but some of my friends were, and they were crying when i got there. i had no idea what to do, what to say, so i sat quietly and stared into the fire.


Possibly more on this later.